It
was called Zerbin, the town she lived in. On occasion, the Sky
Pilots would harass the sky and leave streaks of cloud-like serpents
in the endless blue. The sky was only so blue because Zerbin was
located next to the ocean (Zerbinians called it the Big Blue) and,
duh, the sky reflects the water. Most people told her it was the
other way around. She would spit on their shoes and run back home.

Home
wasn’t anything special. Her parents were both blind, so the
decorations were mostly her taste, her design. She did everything in
her house; it was only when the Sky Pilots came out that she also
felt the need to. There was one Sky Pilot that was her age,
seventeen, and he was the only one who bothered to make silly shapes
in the sky. One time, he’d taken his flyer out and spent
twenty
minutes in the endless blue. By the time he was done, there was a
bouquet of roses in the sky.

Roses
were important for Zerbin. Zerbin was the village by the beach, and
it was most famously nicknamed, “The Village of
Love.”
And of course the town interpretation of love is roses. Tons of them,
pounds of them. Every front yard had a rose bush. Even her parents
planted some, which came with the occasional hunt for band aids and
constant shampooing of red-stained carpet.

See,
it’s a crime, you know, rejecting love, only in Zerbin. Yet
she
did it. She did it all the time. She loved her parents, yes, but she
had already mastered the art of losing. She didn’t count on
anything, so her heart stayed impregnable and guarded. She still kept
the roses up. Through thick and thin, she had no idea, but she kept
the roses up.

Every
day on her way to school, she found roses sprinkled on every
girl’s
door. It was just that way.

On one
of the days the Sky Pilots were out and she was, too, she spotted
Marlita, a seven-year-old girl who liked to cut the thorns off her
mama’s roses.

She
asked, “Hey, Marlita, why do you do that?”

Marlita
looked cross with her, but she liked talking to the girl with blind
parents. It made her feel lucky that she had two loving parents who
made her soup and didn’t spill it on her favorite dresses.

And then
Marlita answered with the most illogical answer. “I do it for
loooooove.”

Mere
sighed. “And why is a rose the symbol of love?”

Marlita
sighed, too, much heavier. “You know, Mere, if you spent less
time asking ridiculous questions and actually acted like a Zerbinian
should, you would have actual friends! And maybe a lover, because
you’re actually pretty!”

“But
why is the rose the symbol of love?”

“Because!
Love has four letters, and so does
‘rose.’”

“‘Lily’
has four letters. Why couldn’t that be love’s
flower?”

Marlita
had stomped away before Mere finished.

In place
of Marlita stepped that one Sky Pilot. The one who liked roses a
whole bunch he was willing to dizzy himself in his flyer just to
portray them in the world’s forever azure ceiling.
He’d
been eavesdropping.

“Hi,”
he said, smiling. His eyes were as blue as the sky he flew in.

Mere
nodded then walked away.

That
night she pored over books. The study lamp hung over her head and
seemed to be getting lower and lower, giving in to the long hours
Mere spent on Cummings, Achebe, and Steinbeck. She got up to get some
water and bumped her head on the lamp, muttering soft curses.

Very
many people asked her about her views on love. She had lived
seventeen years in this village, and people had grown accustomed to
her strange answers, but they were not accustomed to her alienation
of love. Mere’s door had never been laced with roses of any
color. Not just yet. They had waited for her adolescent years to
really decide. She was young and seventeen, but to true Zerbinians,
like Marlita and her parents and the whole string of houses down
almost every block, her love had run out. Love had simply dried up
inside her. Either that or there was no love to begin with.

“She
has a heart,” many argued, but many suggested, “It
keeps
her alive, yet it doesn’t.”

She sat
back down after the water break and really thought about it. Her
response had always been the same:

“Love
is a matter of finding the one you’re truly meant for. But
it’s
like hell. How do you get to an assigned singular page in a
thousand-page book? Like the ones with filmy paper, so it’s
even harder. You close in on the page number, give it several tries.
Then you’ll find you’re two hundred pages off. One
hundred, fifty, then three, oh so close. There you have it, the page.
But that’s too much flipping for me. I’d rather
close the
book, then open it and be happy with the page I’ve randomly
landed on.”

This was
when people would give her looks. Not the kind of look you give a cat
when it’s black, and it doesn’t know the
implications of
its appearance to humans. Not the look you give your lover when the
ocean’s tide gets suddenly high and your only dry clothes are
soaked to a sop. No, it was a mixture of both incredulity and
disgust, of wariness, of pity.

The next
day the Sky Pilot caught her again. He smiled a smile as clear as the
sky he flew in. “Hi.”

Mere
nodded then walked to school.

Studies
were very easy that day and so she stopped by the store and bought
some coffee ice cream. In her opinion, it was the best. Just enough
caffeine and just enough sugar. Except, she didn’t really
like
the idea of being in stores or any public area. But the ice cream had
begged her and she deserved an award.

At home,
she offered her parents some. They both looked at each other, as if
on instinct, as if in place of their sight they gained new presence
detectors. But that wasn’t true because when they addressed
Mere, they only both looked at the train figurine that stood on the
nearby coffee table. They never really looked at her at all, so she
thought their rejecting ice cream was well justified.

The next
day the Sky Pilot bumped into her. He spoke more than one word this
time. And his voice was as drawling as the planes he flew in, but it
was just right that way. “Hi, there.”

Mere
ignored him and walked on home, not wanting to give him clearance
that the “third time’s a charm” idea
really paid
off. Because it didn’t. Mere always knew it was the fourth
time. Because after the third try, who really tried any more?

But
fourth time’s a charm because the Sky Pilot found her again,
this time by a creek, the farthest point of the village away from
shore. She did not have time to wonder how he found her. She also did
not have a chance to ignore him. She found no reason to; he was one
persistent son of a gun.

“Yes,
what do you want?” she asked him.

He
smiled. “I’ve just wanted to talk. I think
you’re
interesting.”

“Just
because everyone talks about my non-existent love life, it does not
make me interesting.”

“Oh,
it’s not that.” He laughed.
“I’ve heard what
you thought about the sky.”

Well,
that was weird. No one ever asked her about the sky.

“And
you say the sky reflects the ocean, and not the other way
around.”

Mere
nodded.

“You
really believe that? That the ocean is actually blue?”

“Yes.
Have you come here to say otherwise?”

“Well,
actually yes. I have.”

She
stood up and gathered her things. Her hair caught dangerously on a
few branches as she maneuvered her way around him. He didn’t
budge.

“I
just wanted to share my opinions.”

“Your
opinions get no grade from me. I hardly know you.”

He
ignored her. “I think neither of them is blue. I think they
need each other to stay that color.”

She
blinked, not wanting to let that sink in. But it did. She felt it was
inevitable. “Well, that’s wonderful. I believe I
have
made a new friend.” She forced a smile.

He
jumped and startled a few bullfrogs across the bank. The happiness
Mere had caused in him also frightened a few blue jays in a nearby
willow. She felt that was the only way to get rid of him. So he went
on home and left her alone. She did not want to think of the
implications she had just given. What exactly were the implications
of being a friend?

She
found out the next day when she opened her door and a bucket of
lilies lay there, glistening under another Sky Pilot-decorated sky.

Zerbin
rejoiced. Mere took the bucket and placed the lilies around the
roses, wondering if the random page she’d landed on was the
actual page that was given.

At
my age, I8, I know it's difficult to be taken as a serious author,
but I've been wanting to be recognized for my works of fiction and
poetry and creative writing ever since I could remember, ever since I
picked up my first book. Words are indulgent; as an author, I want to
make sure my readers' minds are full at the end of the page.

Contact Eliza
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